MARK SHIELDS wholeheartedly supports same-sex weddings — so much so that he spent six years working at the Human Rights Campaign, where marriage equality is front and center. But please, pretty please, don’t invite him to another one.

“The equality people will have a fit about this, but I’ll say it anyway: I have gay-wedding burnout,” Mr. Shields, 35, said one day this spring. “I spent my 20s going to weddings, being in weddings, shopping for weddings, helping to plan weddings. In my early 30s they finally started tapering off, and I was like, ‘Oh, thank God, we’re over the hump.’ ”

He paused for dramatic effect. “Nope. Here come the Gays.”

Be careful what you wish for? The legalization of same-sex marriage in a few states and the District of Columbia — and now at its one-year mark in New York — has resulted in a gay wedding boom, the natural outcome of decades of pent-up demand. And even hardhearted gay men (like me) are thrilled that the happy couples finally have their chance to say “I do.” Finally!

But some unexpected emotions are also bubbling up as the invitations roll in: puzzlement (I don’t know you that well), concern (can I afford another cross-country trip?), dread (not another one, please). At the same time, there is a lack of surprise. Watching straight friends from high school or college marry as they stagger into adulthood (two or three couples a year, some in their 20s and some in their 30s or older) is thrilling in a way that a near-simultaneous stampede of same-sex couples to the altar is not.

Don’t misunderstand. Seeing the look on my friend Tim’s face when he showed off Matt’s ring was a highlight of my life, truly. I am grateful to Jeff and John for the crab claws I gobbled at their postcard-perfect Hollywood Hills reception. I’m in no way making fun of the commitment Melissa and Shari made to each other. (Although I will mock their selection of music: “Love Can Build a Bridge” by the Judds. Really?)

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The gay wedding boom – causing a stampede of same-sex couples to the altar – is the result of decades of pent-up demand.

Christine C. Quinn, the speaker of the New York City Council, and her longtime partner, Kim M. Catullo.Credit
William Alatriste

It’s just that, at least until the backlog burns off, some of us are starting to feel like 20-something sorority sisters — a wedding a weekend, seemingly for eternity.

I’ve attended six same-sex weddings over the last couple of years, with two more on the horizon. That hardly makes me Katherine Heigl in “27 Dresses.” Having too many happily marrying friends is also a minuscule problem, as problems go. As my friend Shaw snapped, “Be grateful anyone wants your whiny face around at all.”

But whine I will: when you’re not used to attending any weddings (or have grown out of the practice), this starts to feel like an awful lot of toasting and tuxedo wearing and traveling.

“I completely support gay marriage and understand the value and beauty of it, but like anything else there’s a saturation point,” said Scott Cooke, a principal at GCK Partners, a New York marketing firm. “A little goes a long way, and most gay men don’t have any interest in little. They feel a need to make a big show — ta-dah! — and you get burned out on that really quickly, or at least I do.”

Mr. Cooke, who has attended seven gay weddings and was recently invited to an eighth, added in a whisper: “This is kind of a taboo thing to admit. Does it make me sound like a bad gay?”

Some people would probably say yes — same-sex marriage needs all the support it can get at a time when states like North Carolina are willing to ban it outright. Even joking about fatigue can rub people the wrong way. Dustin Lance Black, the marriage equality advocate and Oscar-winning screenwriter of “Milk,” responded to an e-mail about high-frequency gay-wedding guests like this: “Weddings among my friends have come to a screeching halt in hopes of legal weddings here in California sooner than later.”

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From top: Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra; Chris Hughes and Sean Eldridge.Credit
Top: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times; Bottom: Mel & Company

Janet Barros, a 71-year-old retiree in Taunton, Mass., said she had been to at least 12 same-sex weddings since her home state legalized them in 2004 and can’t imagine anyone tiring of them. “Each and every one has been lovely and moving,” she said. “I love that gay couples get to write their own rules about what the ceremony and reception should be like. They always thrill with their unpredictability.”

Or they can turn awkward, as couples, looking for guidance and finding little in wedding books and on Web sites, cling a little too rigorously to tradition. The throwing of a garter? If you’re two guys, just don’t do it. Ever.

But in most ways, gay weddings are exactly the same as straight ones, which is to say, an emotional minefield. The push and pull between the sets of parents. Who was asked to make a toast and who wasn’t. The pity parties (always a bridesmaid, never a bride). Same-sex weddings can also add an additional layer of angst: Why can’t my father be more supportive of my relationship, the way that weeping father of the groom appears to be? Am I really allowed to feel euphoria for my marrying gay friends when the Defense of Marriage Act is still in place?

Same-sex weddings can also make us wince as stereotypes go on display in mixed company. Exhibit A: lesbians plodding down the aisle to the Judds. (Or all those times I shrieked and Rockette-kicked when “Dancing Queen” came on at the reception.) I’m talking about one bride in a frilly Vera Wang and one in a butch pantsuit. You’re a better person than I am if that attire doesn’t make your mind wander into areas of their relationship it doesn’t belong.

Mr. Shields, who has been invited to five gay weddings and has a sixth coming up, recalls two men who married in an art gallery filled with S-and-M paintings.

“One was a picture of a naked George Washington dwarf standing on top of a pile of slave dwarfs in fetish gear,” he said. “All I could think was, ‘Oh, please, no — we have moms in the room.’ ” Daniel Nardicio, the New York night-life promoter, said he was invited to a nude gay wedding last fall on Fire Island; not all of the 150 or so guests took the invitation at its word, including Mr. Nardicio, but most did.

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Representative Barney Frank, right, kisses his partner James Ready.Credit
Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times

“Be who you are, I guess,” Mr. Nardicio said. (Can you imagine the starvation diet you’d have to go on after getting that invite?)

Judgment, a favorite gay hobby, factors in, too. A lot of my friends, for instance, think it’s weird for two men who have been together for 30 years to have a big, traditional wedding. In the opposite extreme, it’s hard not to worry when new boyfriends decide to leap into marriage. We’ve all been to straight weddings and wondered how long they would last. But it’s easy to put those thoughts aside and enjoy the party. So what if they end up getting divorced? Society accepts that.

It’s not as easy with the Gays. Since the battle for marriage equality is still raging, the last thing you want to do is hand the opposition ammunition. See! They’re destroying the sanctity of marriage! Toldja!

“There are a lot of gay people running out and getting married who probably shouldn’t,” Mr. Nardicio said. “It’s understandable, of course, because they’re so excited that they finally have equal rights. But still.”

How is he navigating the invitations? “I choose very judiciously,” he said. “You just have to be confident enough to say no.”

Mike Vollman, a movie marketing consultant, laughed when I complained about the wed-a-thon happening among my friends. Enjoy it while you can, he said, because weddings are a breeze compared with what comes next.

“Oh, just wait,” he said. “We’re now on the other side of the gay-wedding bubble with our friends. You know what’s there? I call it death by gay baby shower.”

Correction: August 5, 2012

A montage of pictures on July 22 with an article about the increase in wedding invitations people are receiving because of the legalization of same-sex marriage omitted a credit. The photograph of Mark Davis and James Howe (directly below the uppermost “I Do” in the montage), was by Leslie J. Yerman Photography.

A version of this article appears in print on July 22, 2012, on page ST1 of the New York edition with the headline: I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do ... Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe